A visit to Fermilab - part 1

When Carl and I were first "dating" and we talked about our pasts, we found that we had had similar interests in employers -- Carl had worked for Bell Labs and Fermilab, and I had worked for IBM. When I was graduating with a degree in Physics and Math, the short list of companies I would be thrilled to work for included Bell Labs, Fermilab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and IBM. In a similar way, Ma Bell and IBM were on Carl's short list and with whom he had his resume submitted and hoped and waited for an open position. 

Carl had wanted to take me to visit the FermiLab campus in Batavia, Illinois. With COVID shutdowns during the past couple of years, we had not been allowed to go onto campus, but this year, it was at least partially open, so on Monday, we drove there with the hope of seeing the campus and riding our bikes around.

Fermilab's campus occupies 6800 acres in Batavia, Illinois.

The entrance on Pine Street has the Broken Symmetry sculpture.

Information from one of the brochures I picked up:

When Fermilab's founding director, Robert Wilson, imagined an ideal laboratory, he wanted it to be architecturally impressive and artistically inspiring. With this in mind, he installed remarkable sculptures and designed buildings influenced by culture, history, and physics.

Broken Symmetry, 1978: This 21-ton sculpture greets you as you come through the Pine Street entrance to Fermilab. The three legs are of different height and weight, which creates the asymmetry at the top - but when viewed from directly above or below, the sculpture is perfectly symmetrical. Broken Symmetry is made from metal from the retired U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Princeton, which was the prime recovery ship for the Apollo 10 lunar mission. (additional information: https://history.fnal.gov/historical/art_arch/21tons.html)

We first stopped at the Lederman Science Center.

Carl showed me a solar array on the outside of the building. He had participated in the Alternative Energy Club at Fermilab to work with a vendor to donate the concentrated photovoltaic panel (the part with the parabolic collectors). The Club then worked with the Science Group at Fermilab to determine where to place it, and it was ultimately placed outside the Lederman Science Center.

The Tevatron Collider is decommissioned (not in use at this point) -- this was a display in the Science Center showing how the magnets were designed to accelerate the beam.

An example of a Tevatron Dipole Magnet

Information inside the science center about the solar collectors that Carl had shown me outside.

Energy collection graph - predictably showing that more energy is collected in the summer than earlier in the year, and it is already tailing off in September and October.

While we were in the Lederman Science Center, we saw volunteers harvesting seeds in the prairie grass area.

The Idea Lab within the Science Center had information to engage young folks who might want to get education in fields that would lead them to jobs at Fermilab.

Maybe if I do well enough at the exercises in the Idea Lab, they might consider me for a future "Hire-A-Senior-Citizen" program?

As we were leaving the Lederman Science Center, I took a picture of the scientific data on the birth count for the Bison herd in 2022 -- appropriately, 22 in '22!

A map of the campus can be found here: https://news.fnal.gov/wp-content/uploads/site-map.pdf